Miller:Why saying the United States can destroy
the Islamic State is worse than providing false hope.

On Dec.
6, four days after the San Bernardino attacks, in an Oval Office address (only
the third such address of his almost concluded eight-year presidency),
President Barack Obama reassured Americans that we would prevail against the
threat of terrorism. “The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome
it,” Obama said. “We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to
harm us.”

The
president confidently went to great lengths to tell the nation that we will
draw on all aspects of American power. But Obama did not tell us the whole
truth. A lie is lie only if you tell somebody something you don’t really
believe yourself. And without personally straining the bounds of credulity to
the breaking point, I don’t believe Obama believes that his current strategy
will “destroy” the Islamic State or any other organization that tries to harm
us. The fact that he omitted his customary word “ultimately” from his remarks
likely reflected the urgency of the moment rather than any real conviction that
the war Obama described in his address would be won easily or quickly.

The
president isn’t alone in his desire to offer up definitive solutions to the war
against terrorism. A number of presidential candidates, primarily on the
Republican side, have likewise made super confident and even more grandiose
pronouncements about winning the war against jihadi terrorism and destroying
the Islamic State. Donald Trump: “I would bomb the shit out of them.” Marco Rubio: “If America does not make this [war against terrorism] our fight, the
West will not win it.” Lindsey Graham: “[The United States] should lead an
effort to assemble a multinational force, including up to 10,000 American
troops, to clear and hold Raqqa and destroy ISIS in Syria.” And Ted Cruz: “We
will utterly destroy them. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion.” Even
Hillary Clinton, whose rhetoric is very much toned down, has spoken of a plan
not to contain the Islamic State but to “defeat and destroy ISIS.”

The
only problem with this kind of tough talk is that the goal of winning definitively
the war against jihadi terrorism, including destroying and defeating the
Islamic State, is about as likely as winning the war against drugs, poverty,
mental illness, and banning guns in America. The president, as a self-described
Niebuhrian and a pragmatist who understands that more often than not the best
you can do is to come up with “proximate solutions for insoluble problems,”
ought to know better. Sure, the nation needs to be reassured — jihadi terrorism
isn’t an existential threat to America. But in that moment, the nation could
have used — and could still use — some critically important reality therapy in
what is certainly going to be a very long war against Islamist terrorism. And
here’s why.

The United States isn’t Europe. But does
that matter?

Terrorism
experts argue that four factors make Europe much more vulnerable to jihadi
attacks than the United States: 1) Paris was easily accessible; 2) there are
many European nationals quite eager to kill their own countrymen; 3) there’s a
euro-jihadi infrastructure; and lastly, 4) European security services just
can’t handle the caseload tracking and preempting attacks by the number of
homegrown, returning, or infiltrating jihadis. This rather comforting analysis
makes sense up to a point.

It’s
true that for the United States’ liquid assets (two oceans on either side), our
better border controls, and a better integrated and less aggrieved Muslim
American community, all give us an advantage. But over time, how much of one?
In fact, homegrown jihadis don’t need a big support team or infrastructure for
DIY terrorism; there are plenty of guns on hand, and by the looks of things,
the San Bernardino shooters were impossible for law enforcement to track. Add a
dose of easy access to jihadi propaganda on the web, nativist anti-Muslim
backlash, and Trump’s “keep out the Muslims” campaign and you’ll easily double
the size of a radicalized pool, a percentage of which will act violently. You
don’t need Islamic State-directed operations or Raqqa-dispatched hit teams when
inspiration will do nicely.

The terrorism epicenter

With
all due respect to the solutionists, the war on jihadi terrorism — and that’s
what it is — is a generational enterprise. Fourteen years after 9/11, more than
twice the time it took for the allies to win World War II, the jihadis are
thriving.

My FP colleague
the inestimable Micah Zenko noted that terrorist-related deaths grew by more
than 4,000 percent from 2002 to 2009 and by 148 percent from 2010 to 2014. And
while he pointed out that last year not a single American was killed within the
United States in a terrorist attack, the stats for 2015 are already much more
tragic. The fact is, the Islamic State, al Qaeda affiliates, and a host of
other maniacal groups slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born will not be
extinguished anytime soon. Bad or no governance, leaving empty spaces in a
Middle East that is angry, broken, and dysfunctional — as well as riven with
sectarian tensions and pushed by powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia in their
own deadly proxy war — guarantees the health and well-being of the jihadi
enterprise. This region will be spewing hatred, irrationality, illogic, and a
vicious Islamist medieval ideology for years to come. America won’t be the only
target to be sure. In the past month, the Islamic State has either directed or
inspired terrorist attacks on permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
But the United States, both for what it represents and does in the world, will
be high on the jihadi hit list.

You can’t defeat something big with nothing
big.

Despite
Obama’s pledge to destroy the Islamic State, it’s highly arguable whether the
United States or any other power has the will, means, or skill to do that.
Paris was less a game-changer than it was another cruel turn in the long war
against jihadi terrorism. Obama even boasts of a coalition of 65 nations that
have pledged to defeat the Islamic State. But how many of these really count?
This presumed coalition of the willing, including of course the Brits and the
French, also includes a lot of other countries whose contributions are at best
marginal and too many others that are better described as the unwilling and
self-interested. Just look around. Russia’s priority is keeping Bashar al-Assad
afloat, Turkey is hammering the Kurds, and the Saudis are busy hitting the Houthis
in Yemen. On top of this, no possible combination of local forces can stabilize
Syria, and neither NATO nor the Western powers are willing to commit enough
ground forces to destroy Islamic State sanctuaries in Iraq and Syria to
guarantee the jihadis won’t return. More disconcerting, the Islamic State has
jumped borders now and is operating with impunity in Sinai, Libya, Yemen, and
in parts of Africa. The jihadi cancer has gone global, and the great powers
can’t seem to stop it. And if we’re waiting for the House of Islam to reform
itself and purge its own radicals and extremists, we’ll be waiting for a very
long time to come.

The wild, wild West

As
terrorism analysts Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin point out, in
counterterrorism and law enforcement we’ve come a long way since 9/11:
“Post-9/11 visa requirements and no-fly lists weed out most bad actors, and
both the Bush and Obama administrations demanded that countries in our visa
waiver program provide data on extremists through information-sharing pacts
called HSPD-6 agreements.” And we’re making improvements in other areas too,
such as the agreement with the European Union over passenger name records in
2012.

Keeping
bad guys (and girls) out is one thing. What about tracking U.S. citizens
already here, particularly those who seem to live normal lives as the San
Bernardino shooters seemed to have done? The FBI has 900 inquiries related to
the Islamic State now open in all 50 states out of some 10,000 counterterrorism
cases. And how can you intensively watch and track them all? Add the ease with
which weapons and explosives can be accessed; toss in the size of the country
and the ease and anonymity with which people move about; and add a pinch of the
freedoms that protect us all and you have a powerful brew just waiting to boil
over. Indeed, some would argue that in comparison to ordinary mass killings,
jihadi terrorism is rare. As of Dec. 2, in 209 of the 336 days this year, there was at least one shooting a day that killed or injured more than four people.

None of
this depressing reality therapy appeared in the president’s address to the
nation. Understandably, Obama wasn’t interested in scaring Americans but
unifying and reassuring them. Maybe like 9/11, what happened in San Bernardino
was an anomaly, and we will be spared another jihadi attack for another 14
years.

I very
much doubt it. DIY terrorism thrives where there is an abundance of soft
targets: freedom, anonymity, access to guns, and aberrant human behavior
motivated by ideology and religious extremism, in this case radical Islam.
Indeed, in today’s world, no other kinds of religious extremists are directing
and inspiring their followers to kill innocents on a global scale other than
Islamist ones.

We can
certainly weaken the Islamic State. We can make it harder for jihadis to
operate in Syria and maybe even destroy the Islamic State’s base of operations
there, if we figured out a way to fill the empty spaces with reliable local
partners and better governance. But we won’t win the war against the jihadis
anymore than we can win the war against crime, drugs, or mental illness. Get
real, President Obama and whoever will be the next president. We’ll be fighting
jihadis for years to come. Level with us and don’t infantilize us: We deserve
honesty and clarity on this issue. Sure, the goal is to win the war against
jihadis. But this isn’t World War II, neither in the magnitude of the threat
nor in the commitment you’re prepared to make. Forget the grandiosity and grand
coalitions. In the meantime, just help us survive this war over the long run,
hopefully with our values and our security more or less intact.

“This fearmongering and hatred that’s going
on by people running for the President is so misguided,” Patinkin said.

When
Mandy Patinkin walked out onto the “Late Show” stage Friday night, it became
clear that he wasn’t just there as some Hollywood actor promoting the season
finale of “Homeland” to Stephen Colbert.

Patinkin
was just as serious as when he avenged his father’s death in the “Princess
Bride,” which Ted Cruz keeps quoting. Right off the bat, Patinkin began
addressing the nature of good and evil and the models through which we decide
to go to war.

At the
end of season four of “Homeland,” his character Saul was being held captive and
wanted to take his own life instead of have his life mean that terrorists went
free as part of an exchange. Saul realizes it’s getting harder to tell who are
the good guys and who are the bad guys anymore. “He looked in the mirror and he
went ‘I’m the enemy.’ The line of good and evil runs through each one of us,”
Patinkin said.

Patinkin
said that anyone who is prepared to take a life is placing themselves above the
law and believing that they are God. While he was talking about war and peace,
he could very well have been talking about the right-wing trope about “good
guys with guns.”

But
Patinkin was just getting started. “It is essential that we stop this paradigm
of violence that Saul has learned,” he said passionately. “By that I mean, it
hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked, this violence ‘an eye for an eye.’ We have to
come up with a new paradigm … and what is that new paradigm if war isn’t
working? Where you spend $4 trillion on this war. What is being spent on the
marginalized people in humanity? All of these wonderful Muslim men and women
that have no education, no opportunity, no good schooling and so what do they
do? They look for someone else who’s saying ‘will give you a better life.’ Why
aren’t we talking that money that’s used for bombs, and making schools and
hospitals and homes and opportunity?”

Patinkin
went on to say that many people defend bombs because “bombs make a lot of money
for a lot of people and education doesn’t make money.” From there he addressed
fear saying that it’s normal and healthy to feel it. “This fearmongering and
hatred that’s going on by people running for the President of United States, is
so misguided. It is important that we open up our arms and our hearts to
refugees that are fleeing a horrifying situation.” Patinkin spent time earlier this month in Lesbos with the refugees, holding a baby in his arms he feared
was dead.

“When
you meet these women and children you will not be afraid!” Patinkin pleaded
with the audience to help the refugees. “Humanity is a good thing when
exercised… Use your imagination about how you can make the world a better
place, and bomb all of these marginalized people with opportunity.”

Zakaria:“Radical
Islamic terrorism.” Apparently, the phrase — if you can actually say it — has
mystical powers. At Tuesday’s Republican debate, the candidates once more took
pains to point out that they would speak the dreaded words that President Obama
and Hillary Clinton dare not. “We have a president who is unwilling to utter
its name,” Ted Cruz said in his opening statement.

As it
turns out, the first time I described the enemy as “radical Islam” was in a column I wrote days after 9/11. I used the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”
in another column later that month. So, having established my credentials, I
can honestly say that it gives absolutely nothing in the way of an answer or
strategy to deal with terrorist attacks.

It’s
not just Republicans who have decided that Obama’s and Clinton’s unwillingness
to use this phrase is a sign of weakness and strategic incoherence. There is a
cottage industry of writers who boast that they are brave enough to name the
enemy.

In
fact, Obama has often spoken about the problems of extremism in Islam. His
speech last year to the U.N. General Assembly focused significantly on that
topic: “Today, it is violence within Muslim communities that has become the
source of so much human misery. ... It is
time for the world —
especially Muslim communities — to
explicitly, forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations
like al-Qaeda and ISIL [the Islamic State].”

In his
speech after the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings, Obama again made some of
these points, leading late-night comic Seth Meyers to quip: “So he used the
words ‘radical,’ ‘Islam,’ and ‘terrorism,’ he just didn’t use them in the right
order. Which would be a problem if it was a spell and he was Harry Potter, but
he’s not, so it isn’t.”

Obama
and Clinton have chosen not to describe the enemy as “radical Islam” out of
deference to the many Muslim countries and leaders who feel it gives the
terrorists legitimacy. President George W. Bush was similarly careful in his
rhetoric. For this reason, throughout the Middle East, the Islamic State is
called Daesh , an acronym with derogatory connotations.

Conservatives
have discovered a newfound love for France after its president declared war
following the Paris attacks. They might not have realized that François
Hollande purposely declared war not on the Islamic State but on Daesh. His
foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, explained: “I do not recommend using the term
Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists.
The Arabs call it ‘Daesh,’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats.’”

The
best proof that calling radical Islam by its name provides no solutions is that
the Republican candidates had none at Tuesday’s debate. After all the huffing
and puffing, the most aggressive among them proposed more bombing, no-fly zones
and arming the Kurds.

These
are modest additions to Obama’s current strategy, each with its own problems.
More bombing has proved hard because there are many innocent civilians in
Islamic State strongholds. Administration sources tell me that a no-fly zone
would require at least 200 U.S. aircraft and would do little to stop the
violence, which is mostly conducted on land, with some via helicopters). Arming
the Kurds directly would enrage the Iraqi and Turkish governments, as well as
many of the Sunni tribes that would have to eventually occupy the lands that are
liberated. These are judgment calls, not no-brainers.

Most
important, however, fighting this terrorist group is not the same as fighting
radical Islam. Strangely, after the GOP candidates boldly and correctly
described the enemy as an ideology — which is much broader than one group —
they spoke almost entirely about fighting that one group. Even if the Islamic
State were defeated tomorrow, would that stop the next lone-wolf jihadist in
New York or Paris or London? The San Bernardino killers appear to have been
radicalized when the terrorist group barely existed.

In
fact, the enemy is radical Islam, an ideology that has spread over the past
four decades — for a variety of reasons — and now infects alienated young men
and women across the Muslim world. The fight against it must at its core be
against the ideology itself. And that can be done only by Muslims — they alone
can purge their faith of this extremism. After a slow start, several important
efforts are underway, perhaps more than people realize. The West can help by
encouraging these forces of reform, allying with them and partnering in efforts
to modernize their societies. But that is much less satisfying than hurling
invectives, calling for bans on Muslims and advocating carpet-bombing.